Voices from the ancestors

Tuesday, 15 January 2013

Hi everyone, I've been away from blogging for quite a while but hope to be back to normal now. I opened the cook book at random today and came to this recipe for Sausage Pie. Now I love sausages and I love pies, sounds like a match made in heaven (especially with the wintery weather here on the West Coast of Scotland)

Sausage Pie

1lb sausages, 1 egg, 1lb mashed potatoes, 2 tablespoons bread crumbs. Put the sausages into a saucepan with cold water and bring them to the boil. Drain, remove the skins and cut the sausages into 4 pieces each. Place them in a greased proof dish and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Have ready some nicely mashed potatoes and spread them over the sausages. Brush them over with beaten egg, sprinkle the breadcrumbs and bake for 20-30 mins in a fairly hot oven. Serve hot. The potatoes may be brushed over with milk instead of egg.

Hmmm, not quite a pie - I always like pastry, but this recipe does sound tasty. We often have sausages with mashed potatoes. I think I might try it but fry the sausages before I skin them and add in some onions to make a sausagey gravy.

Right, I'm off to see if there are any sausages in the freezer, watch this space for the results!

Monday, 20 February 2012

Plain Cake, it sounds a bit boring, but I'm determined to put in all the recipes in the book, no matter how uninspiring or odd sounding!

Plain Cake

Put 1/4lb butter into 1lb flour and 1lb sultanas or raisins, 1/4lb moist sugar, 1/4lb candied peel sliced finely, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 pint new milk, 1 egg. Beat well together and pour into a greased tin and bake. Thrust a wire into it, when it comes out clean, it is done.

I love this recipe, no do it in this order, or add a bit at a time, just fling it all in and there your cake shall be! Oh and I'm not telling you the temperature or how long! I don't know if I would dare to try this recipe, I'm not really a cake baker, muffins are more my thing and I'd be a bit scared it would all go wrong. If anyone tries this one let me know how it goes! ;-)

Thursday, 16 February 2012

I know soup is good for a winter day but I thought I would delve into the Puddings section of the cook book next. The first page contains four recipes, each as stodgy as the last! I will try and post the recipes in photo form too, but my camera is currently out of action. So if it's cold and horrible where you are (as it is here) then dive in, forget the calories and enjoy!

Cheese Pudding

4oz best rice stewed gently in a pint of water for 1/2 hour. At the end of that time pour in two pints of milk, add 3oz grated cheesea and season with salt and pepper. Let all boil gently for another 1/2 hour and serve very hot.

I feel warmer all ready. I have transcribed all the recipes as they are written, so any grammatical errors are not mine, Elizabeth would have written this book for her own use so would have used notation, or skipped words as she saw fit!

Wednesday, 15 February 2012

This cook book was written by my Grandfather's grandmother, Elizabeth Lowe Stewart (nee Watt) and then passed onto my Gran. It is full of recipes, many of which I have probably tasted and my Dad would definitely have grown up eating. As we go through the book I'll tell you a little bit more about the author and her family.

The book is written in 16 original sections with others added at later dates. The ink and handwriting are fairly consistent throughout although some recipes have been altered later or commented on. At the back of the book snippets from magazines have been pasted in, unfortunately there are no dates included.

Here is the first one from the book, taken from Soups.

Onion Soup

Peel 6 good sized Spanish onions - cut them into slices and fry a pale brown. Drain off the fat, put them into a saucepan with a quart of water and stew till quite tender, then pass them through a seive and return them to the pan. Add a cup of sifted breadcrumbs previously soaked in as much sweet milk as they will absorb, season with pepper and salt, boil up at once and serve very hot. An improvement is to sprinkle a little grated cheese - Parmesan for choice, over the soup just before serving.

As you can see amounts are largely ignored as is a list of ingredients, and I like the fact that no mention is given of adding anything to the pan to fry the onions in but you need to pour off the fat after frying. If she was anything like my gran, cooking was second nature, I used to watch my gran make cakes and she didn't weigh anything, she would know by looking whether it was right!

So I hope you come back to see some more recipes from the archive as well as a diary of Canadian travels and some contracts of apprenticeship.

About Me

I have been researching my family tree for about 15 years and in that time have been given lots of original documents to archive. Up to now that has meant keeping them safe in a box. Here I would like to share some of the recipes, diaries and other papers - it should keep me blogging for quite a while! I hope you enjoy and if you think you might be related, please get in touch!